Seven - The Dentist

This really tiny snippet of a story serves two purposes, as far as I can tell. The first is obviously the development of Curt Lemon. So far, we only know little morsels of information about Lemon, like the trick or treating story, and how he got blown to smithereens. This chapter shows that he is not exactly as brave as he lets on, implying that maybe all of his brave exploits that he so often does are really only masking the fact that he's terrified just like all the rest of them. This deep-seated fear seems to leak out when the dentist comes to visit, which then leads to the second purpose. O'Brien noted on page 21 that the soldiers weren't fighting because of courage or valor, they were just "too frightened to be cowards." The story about Lemon and the dentist reinforces this point by having the dentist pull a perfectly good tooth just because Lemon was afraid to appear afraid. Seems like a silly reason to pull teeth or go to war, but it makes sense I guess.

This is a dentist. Lemon is afraid of them, and can you really blame him?